The short answer
Install your eSIM at home, keep your passport and, if you filed one, the Visit Japan Web QR code handy, and have your route to Osaka or Kyoto loaded before you leave the gate. Kansai International Airport, IATA code KIX and known locally as Kankū, sits on an artificial island in Osaka Bay, 38 km south-west of Osaka Station. It is the main international airport for the Greater Osaka Area and the closest one to Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. It opened on 4 September 1994, and in 2025 it handled 34.1 million passengers, 27.5 million of them on international flights.
Immigration comes first
EU and Turkish passports enter visa-free for up to 90 days as temporary visitors, and immigration photographs and fingerprints every foreign visitor. Visit Japan Web, the Digital Agency's service, lets you file the immigration and customs declarations online before you land and show a QR code at the desk. Carry your passport from here on, because the UK Foreign Office notes you must be able to show it at all times.
Give yourself time on the way in. Terminal 1, designed by Renzo Piano, is the longest airport terminal in the world at 1.7 km, and a far gate means a real walk before you even reach the queue.
Off the island and into the city
A 3.75 km bridge connects the airport island to the mainland at Rinku Town. For Kyoto, the Haruka train reaches the city in about 1 hour 20 minutes. For Osaka, we do not list lines or fares: check the route from KIX to your hotel in your map app before you fly and save it offline. An IC card such as Suica or Pasmo pays for local trains, subways and buses nationwide, and Kyoto to Osaka is a fifteen-minute shinkansen hop if you split your stay. One trap for map pins: Osaka International Airport, known as Itami, is a different airport closer to the city, so make sure yours says Kansai. Taxis are the expensive option.
Getting online the moment you land
An eSIM is a profile, not a card: scan it at home on Wi-Fi, leave it off for the flight, and switch it on when the plane door opens. On a terminal this long, data from the gate means you can check your train, message your hotel and pull up the Visit Japan Web QR code while you walk, instead of stopping at the end to sort it all out. Goodbars sells a Japan eSIM you install at home and switch on when you land; it runs on NTT docomo, Japan's largest mobile network by mobile contracts, and our Japan coverage page shows where it reaches and what independent speed tests measure. The caveat: your phone has to support eSIM and must not be network-locked.
SIM cards and pocket Wi-Fi
Japan is the country where renting a pocket Wi-Fi is a real habit: one small router, booked online, collected when you land, shared by everyone in your group and returned before you fly home. We have not documented the rental pickups at Kansai ourselves, so confirm with the rental company where you collect it and until what time. A local prepaid SIM is the other route; where to buy one at KIX, check before you fly rather than hoping after a late landing. For a group that sticks together all day, a shared router can pay; for most solo travellers and couples, an eSIM is less to carry, charge and return.
